i was fairly bummed out this morning.  i had one of those unusual commutes where nothing goes right.  my fellow commuters who were using four wheels instead of two seemed especially anxious and lacking in patience or compassion.  so i opted for a less direct but lower key route than usual.  given the poor start to the day, it was rather uplifting today to see this...

http://www.fabb-bikes.org/blog/2007/06/fairfax-county-gets-serious-about-on.html

and specifically, this:

http://www.fabb-bikes.org/blog/bikertltr1jun2007.pdf

i don't think there's any question at this point that progress is being made.  it's incremental, but it's being made.  i've posted a bunch of stuff here about groups like fabb.  i've gotten some supportive mail and some notes that question whether there's really a difference being made.  i think that what's especially valuable here is that there's a solid effort to work in conjunciton with county government to present a unified approach.  vdot is like any governmental agency: they have more work that they can reasonably accomplish, more stakeholders than they can ever satisfy, and all sorts of people with opposite ideas controlling their budget.  groups like fabb are taking advantage of this by building concensus and seeking incremental change.  and this will be simple to evaluate as well: either the work will be done or the work will not be done.  for every one of these projects that get's completed, especially if it's near you and you utilize it, consider a thank you to the county supervisors.

- posted by scott